E. T. Sullivan

When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusual way.  He doesn't stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts.  Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home of some obscure mother.  And then God puts the idea into the mother's heart, and she puts it in the baby's mind. And then God waits.  The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts.  The greatest forces in the world are babies.

In Charles L. Wallis, ed., The Treasure Chest (1965), 53. as quoted by Gordon B. Hinckley, “These, Our Little Ones,” Ensign, Dec 2007, 4–9"

James E. Faust

Marriage is the way provided by God for the fulfillment of the greatest of human needs, based upon mutual respect, maturity, selflessness, decency, commitment, and honesty. Happiness in marriage and parenthood can exceed a thousand times any other happiness.

James E. Faust, “The Enriching of Marriage,” Ensign, Nov 1977, 9

Spencer W. Kimball

Marriage is perhaps the most vital of all the decisions and has the most far-reaching effects, for it has to do not only with immediate happiness, but also with eternal joys. It affects not only the two people involved, but also their families and particularly their children and their children’s children down through the many generations.

Spencer W. Kimball, “Oneness in Marriage,” Ensign, Oct 2002, 40

Adapted from a devotional address given at Brigham Young University on 7 September 1976. The full text is published in a Deseret Book Company book, Marriage and Divorce.

Spencer W. Kimball

While marriage is difficult, and discordant and frustrated marriages are common, yet real, lasting happiness is possible, and marriage can be more an exultant ecstasy than the human mind can conceive. This is within the reach of every couple, every person. “Soul mates” are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price.

Spencer W. Kimball, “Oneness in Marriage,” Ensign, Oct 2002, 40 

Adapted from a devotional address given at Brigham Young University on 7 September 1976. The full text is published in a Deseret Book Company book, Marriage and Divorce.

Spencer W. Kimball

We are limited in our visions. With our eyes we can see but a few miles. With our ears we can hear but a few years. We are encased, enclosed, as it were, in a room, but when our light goes out of this life, then we see beyond mortal limitations. …The walls go down, time ends and distance fades and vanishes as we go into eternity … and we immediately emerge into a great world in which there are no earthly limitations.

The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball (1982), 40–41.

Orson F. Whitney

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.

Orson F. Whitney, as quoted from “Chapter 2: Tragedy or Destiny?,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball, (2006),11–21"